Embodied living through presence & pleasure

Tag: dance

I awoke to cottonly fluffs of snow swirling outside my window, falling in that silent and steady way that makes a snow day so magical.

As I was stretching myself awake I had this feeling of, let’s play hooky today. I believe in the power of pleasure and enjoying my down time with zero guilt! But something felt off about blowing off my whole day. Kind of like eating too many doughnuts, even with zero guilt, you’re going to feel sluggish and stuffed.

What to do? Push into “productivity mode”? Call myself lazy and undisciplined. Nah. Doesn’t work for me. What this calls for is to “change state,” by bringing pleasure and the type of energy you want into the moment. If your current state is feeling blah and you want to feel energized and inspired, I highly recommend some type of movement to quickly change your state.

So that’s what I did, I put on this Bebe song and got to dancing, letting my body lead the way with shaking and stomping and singing along badly! To move, to sing, to connect to your aliveness, these are all great ways to change state.

Only trouble is, sometimes I find it hard to stop dancing and sit down to work! But that’s ok, that’s a great new “problem” to handle. Then I shift into grounding myself to feel clear and calm and focused. I do that by lighting a candle, connecting to why I am doing the tasks that I’m doing today, and taking a few slow deep breaths to get settled.

Because I talk about a pleasurable approach, people sometimes tell me if they embraced pleasure they’d never get anything done. But, this is where discernment comes in. Is it truly pleasurable for me to play hooky and watch movies all day? Some days the answer might be yes. Other days, if I slow down and get honest with myself, I know there is a deeper pleasure in showing up for my to-do list and my work because I care about it and I’m connected to a sense of purpose, which is it’s own type of pleasure.

So, what’s your preferred way to “change state” when you feel like blowing off your to-do list? How do you know when blowing it off is the right thing for that day? I’d love to hear from you in the comments.